Lyr Req: China Trade Song for 1st graders

Subject: Lyr Req: China Trade Song for 1st graders
From: GUEST,Gloucesterman
Date: 17 Dec 03 - 10:33 PM

Now here's a challenge. Anyone have a suggestion about a song that at least mentions the China Trade suitable for 1st graders? Silk, tea, spices, and such?
Many thanks.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: China Trade Song for 1st graders
From: Dead Horse
Date: 18 Dec 03 - 01:32 PM

Wot! No opium?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: China Trade Song for 1st graders
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Dec 03 - 02:26 PM

Thought that this one should be easy, but can't find anything suitable.
Perhaps this one could be shortened and modified- It tells the story of trade in the days of sail. "Merchandise" (click) by J. Milton Hayes.
I have posted it separately in a new thread.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: China Trade Song for 1st graders
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 18 Dec 03 - 02:40 PM

Ranzo Ray! (the version listed as "Ranzo Ray 2" in the Digital Tradition, and there is a sound file)

It's a simple sea chanty that starts (the way my band Dogwatch used to sing it, though not on the DT), "We're bound away for China on board of a Limey liner." Then there are lots of verses about various ports and what you're taking there. Examples from the lyrics Dogwatch sang: "We're bound for Buenos Aires with a load of green canaries"; "We're bound away for Frisco with a load of Chile pisco."

But I've always wanted to do this song as an ad lib, getting ports from the audience and making up the cargoes to rhyme, and now you can do it for me! Make up some verses about ports in China, fill your hold with cargoes that appeal to small people, and there you are.

"We're bound away for Shanghai with a load of year-old porkpie"

"We're bound away for Tsingtao with a hold that's full of cat chow"

"We're bound away for Kowloon with a load of rusty teaspoons". . .

Claire

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: China Trade Song for 1st graders
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Dec 03 - 03:25 PM

Tsingtao? Cat chow? Politically correct? Not exactly. On current maps, the city is Qingdao. Could not be used in a class with students of Asian ancestry, nor could the others lines.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: China Trade Song for 1st graders
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 18 Dec 03 - 03:36 PM

Sorry re the spelling, I was looking at an old atlas.

OK, so why is it you can't take cat food to Qingdao? Are there no cats there? Honestly, I don't quite get it. I'm not the most PC person I know, but neither am I the least, and I don't see any implied slur.

Perhaps I'm too mired in the chanty's origins, which are not from a PC time, but we never had anyone react negatively to the song.

If anything I posted here is offensive to anyone, I apologize. I think the concept is a sound one, and I believe there are other cargo rhymes that would work for Chinese ports and wouldn't offend a soul.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: China Trade Song for 1st graders
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Dec 03 - 04:00 PM

Chinese restaurants are always accused of serving cat and dog. The Chinese I know (second to 4th generation North Americans) take deep offence at any reference to this. Kowloon and Shanghai are both ridiculed by the suggestion that they would accept trash. This doesn't play in primary school, especially in my area where we have 20% visible minorities.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: China Trade Song for 1st graders
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 18 Dec 03 - 04:27 PM

Q, I can honestly say that would never have occurred to me; I would've thought you'd be feeding the cats, not feeding them TO anyone. My apologies.

The porkpies sprang to mind simply because "yucky" items just appeal to little ones; it had nothing to do with presumed tastes in Shanghai. "Rusty teaspoon" was extrapolated from "rusty razors" in Hugill's version (the one on the DT). In fact, many of the items in the Hugill are second-rate, in their way -- but I'd never assume that was because the intended receiving port had low standards; I'd assume it was because the ship carrying the goods (or the owner of said ship) was kind of sleazy.

At any rate, you do have good points. But it needn't damn the original idea:

We're bound away for Kowloon, blown by a tropic typhoon?

We're bound away for Shanghai with a load of potted cacti?

(I do have to give up on Qingdao, though; with no railing on our port bow is all I could think of and it's WAY too contrived)

Claire

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: China Trade Song for 1st graders
From: Melani
Date: 18 Dec 03 - 10:42 PM

I can't think of anything about "Ranzo Ray" that would really offend anyone, except maybe the verse about drunken Johnnies, but you wouldn't sing that with first graders anyway.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: China Trade Song for 1st graders
From: Dead Horse
Date: 19 Dec 03 - 03:27 PM

Why should "Drunken Johnnies" be offensive, for Pete's sake?
"What shall we do with a drunken sailor" is, and always has been, very popular with youngsters.
If you must be PC, give up singing altogether, and listening, too, dammit. (not aimed at you, Melani. Just PCers in general)
I do get bloody annoyed when creativity and the enjoyment of song (or anything else for that matter) is ruined by the PC brigade!!!

Rant over, back to my medication.